


part of you

by cuubism



Series: Tumblr Prompts [8]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, History, Humor, Immortality, Languages, Light Angst, M/M, Magnus Bane Deserves Nice Things, Magnus Bane-centric, Malay language, Supportive Alec Lightwood, crack with feelings, soft, the tragedy of being immortal and watching your native language and culture change around you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuubism/pseuds/cuubism
Summary: Magnus is confronted by a mundane who claims to know he's immortal, and is about to blast the guy and run the hell away when he realizes--all the mundane wants is to ask about Magnus's native language.The four hundred-year-old dialect he hasn't had the opportunity to speak with anyone for centuries.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Tumblr Prompts [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887421
Comments: 42
Kudos: 243





	part of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tothetrashwhereibelong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothetrashwhereibelong/gifts).



> based on @tothetrashwhereibelong's [post on tumblr](https://tothetrashwhereibelong.tumblr.com/post/631283297684733952/okay-but-one-of-my-favorite-tropes-ever-is), as well as their other meta on Magnus's relationship with his native language.

“Hey. Aren’t you _immortal?_ ”

Magnus looked up, hackles rising as a random man he’d never seen before plopped into Alec’s seat while he was up getting them refills. Seriously, the _audacity._ Who did this guy think he was?

And then what the man said finally registered, and Magnus dropped his coffee.

“Haha—what?” he choked out, dabbing at the spilled coffee with a handful of napkins.

The man leaned in across the table. He looked sort of desperate. That was never a good look on anyone, especially not a mundane who claimed to know what Magnus was. “You’re immortal.”

“Who, me? _No_ ,” said Magnus, not-so-subtly peering around for the exit. Could he make a break for it? Or would that just prove the man right? Maybe he could get Alec to threaten the guy. That was always entertaining. “I’m just a totally normal, human being with an average lifespan of seventy-nine years.”

Magnus’s interrogator rolled his eyes. “That’s _incredibly_ suspicious, you know. You should really get better at covering yourself.”

“But I’m just a mund— a human man with nothing to hide,” Magnus protested, sweating.

“Oh yeah? When were you born, then?”

Magnus scrambled for a date. “1912.”

“That would make you _a hundred and eight._ ”

Shit. “2002?”

“Look, man.” The guy leaned closer to Magnus, wild-eyed, and Magnus leaned back instinctively. “I know who you are. Your name’s Magnus Bane, you’re an immortal warlock, and you were born in Jakarta in the mid sixteenth century.”

Oooooookay. Now was the time to knock this guy out and flee the building. Magnus raised his hands to do just that—

 _“Wait wait wait!”_ The man held up his hands in a _stop_ gesture. “I’m not going to out you. I promise. I just want to ask you some questions about your language.”

By _Lilith._ If this was another overeager Satanist wanting Magnus to teach him Chthonic, Magnus was going to go ballistic.

He leaned back in his chair. “I’m _not_ helping you summon a demon.”

The man’s brow furrowed. “You can summon demons in Malay?”

“No, you can’t—” Magnus blinked. Then blinked again as if that would clear up the chaos happening before him. “Did you say Malay?”

Apparently taking this as an opening, the guy scrambled in his satchel and pulled out a stack of papers, slapping them down on the table. The top few that Magnus could see seemed to be photocopies of primary sources, handwritten texts in— in _Malay._ And not modern Malay, these were written exclusively in Jawi, in a style Magnus hadn’t seen for centuries.

“Here’s my research,” the man said. “I’m trying to fill in the gaps in our understanding of how Malay was pronounced in the mid-to-late fifteen-hundreds. But the problem is, well… no one alive can pronounce it.”

Magnus recognized the writing on the page. He recognized it as the language he’d seen and heard around him as he grew up, the language that had been morphed over time into something radically different today. The language that he hadn’t had the opportunity to learn how to read as a child, but had gone back to pick up later in life, only to watch as it slipped away from him to the whims of time and power.

He had a few similar texts in his own library, but still he found himself reaching for the documents on the table before he could remember he was supposed to be pretending he _wasn’t_ four hundred years old.

The man’s eyes gleamed in triumph. “I _knew_ you could read it! Now, will you please, _please_ , just tell me how to pronounce it? I will literally give you anything. Co-authorship of the paper, money—well, you probably don’t _need_ money, but still, I’ll pay you if you want—”

He cut off abruptly, eyes widening, at the same moment that Magnus felt Alec’s presence at his back, and Alec’s hand dropped onto his shoulder. Magnus glanced up at his husband to find him fixing the researcher with a steely glare, a glamoured blade gripped in his hand. Their coffee order was nowhere in sight.

“Is this guy bothering you?” Alec asked, never taking his eyes off the man.

Magnus couldn’t suppress a bit of a smirk as he watched the researcher pale under Alec’s glare. But he patted Alec’s hand where it lay on his shoulder.

“No, darling, it’s alright. This young man here—” he realized suddenly that he didn’t know the guy’s name, and looked to him for the answer.

“Aditya,” the man squeaked.

“—Aditya was just asking for help with his research.”

Aditya nodded vigorously.

Alec was still watching him suspiciously, but he pulled a chair over and sat down next to Magnus, fixing Aditya with a glare that said _be polite or else_ better than any words could.

Magnus waved a hand at him. “Pay my husband no mind,” he told Aditya, who was still casting nervous glances in Alec’s direction. “Tell me about your research. What do you need help with?”

Aditya’s gaze snapped back to Magnus. He seemed like he couldn’t believe his luck. “Well, um, if you could, I guess, just read this document—”

He dug into his satchel and had only just started to pull something out when Alec’s hand shot out to wrap around his wrist, making him flinch violently.

Magnus sighed. _“Alexander.”_

Alec withdrew his hand. “Move _slowly_ ,” he told Aditya, who very very very slowly removed a pocket recording device from his bag.

“If I could record you reading this,” he said, “it would be— well, helpful doesn’t really cut it. _Groundbreaking_ , is more like it.”

Magnus was on the verge of saying _yes_ when he made himself pause to think about it. On the one hand, there was nothing he’d love more than to contribute to the longevity of the language he grew up speaking. So few people understood _his_ version of it, if the records were even slightly more complete, that could only be beneficial. But on the other hand—

Everything he had ever learned—from other immortals and from his own life experience—said _don’t let a mundane find out you’re immortal._ Nothing good _ever_ came of it no matter how trustworthy they seemed. And here he was, about to give one _proof_.

Alec glanced at him, and, seeming to read Magnus’s mind, said, “You can’t use the recording.”

Aditya deflated. “But—”

“You can transcribe the pronunciation and use the transcription,” Magnus said. “I’ll charm your device so it expires in a week. That should be plenty of time to transcribe it. But this can’t trace back to me directly in any way.”

Aditya sighed and nodded. “I understand.”

Magnus looked at the document and slowly started to speak, feeling a bit rusty at first from lack of practice but quickly easing into his natural pronunciation of the words. Magnus spoke hundreds of languages with varying degrees of proficiency, and many fluently, but this particular dialect of Malay still came easiest to his tongue out of all of them, even after centuries of barely speaking it. (There was hardly anyone to speak it _to_ , after all).

It was his language, and it would always be a part of him, even if it disappeared from the rest of the world.

Alec’s posture eased as he spoke, his gaze moving away from Aditya to watch Magnus, a soft smile on his face. Magnus glanced up at him briefly and was taken by the fondness in his eyes, how much he was clearly enjoying listening to Magnus read.

Aditya, meanwhile, looking like he was experiencing the rapture. When Magnus finished, and had charmed the recording device to self-delete, he jumped to his feet and reached out to shake Magnus’s hand with both of his own. _“Thank_ you, oh my God, that was incredible, you’ve truly saved me you have no idea, thank you thank you—”

Magnus let him shake his hand up and down several times before withdrawing it.

“You’re quite welcome, my dear.”

Aditya placed the audio recorder back in his bag reverently. “This is so amazing. This is lifechanging. I’m going to go get started on the transcription right now. Thank you so much.”

And he ran for the door, leaving the document behind. Magnus handed it after him, but he waved it away.

“Keep it, I have copies!”

And then he was gone. It wasn’t until the door swung shut behind him that Magnus realized he’d forgotten to ask how the hell he’d known who Magnus was.

He shook his head, still a little stunned over the whole experience.

Alec was looking where Aditya had disappeared. “That was strange.”

Magnus patted his arm. “Mundane academic culture is, darling. Don’t think too hard on it.”

Alec looked down at the document on the table between them. “Do you think he would be able to…” he bit his lip, “speak it… with you?”

Magnus sighed. “Doubtful. Academics might have a decent grasp on the grammar and vocabulary based on their reading, but picking up the pronunciation, the regional specifics and colloquialisms, without a tutor—I don’t think it would be possible.”

Alec frowned, dissatisfied with this answer. He pointed at a sentence in the document. “How did you pronounce that one?”

Magnus told him.

Alec repeated it, running his index finger along the line as he spoke as if he was learning how to read it.

“Will you teach me how to speak it the way you do?”

Magnus looked at him in surprise. “The language, you mean?”

Alec nodded.

“The pronunciation’s changed, you know. A bunch of the words, too. Nobody will be able to understand you when you speak it, darling.”

“That’s okay,” Alec said. “ _You_ will.”

Magnus swallowed, throat suddenly tight. Because wasn’t that a lovely thought?

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if you think any details about the language are inaccurate! 
> 
> [tumblr](https://cuubism.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
